Great men? Great women?

Whitman Notebook, mid 1850s

Democracy is not the right word for it, nor is Republicanism. Conservative. Liberal. Reactionary. Progressive. Left. Right. All terminology, somehow: wrong.

This is nothing new, after all, over 6o years ago it was written: "The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another" (Orwell, "Politics and the English Language" 1946).


And here we are now, 2010, nearing a mid-term election that has all the markings of a "sea-change," "referendum on...," "mandate," "blood-bath," "wave election," "sweeping change," "critical barometer," "another 1994/1982/1946," and I could go on.


What all this, and the punditry, polling, & pandering in the media, has me thinking about is a need for a positive political movement. As we continually relearn: it may be possible to win a campaign on "Hope & Change," but those concepts are exceedingly hard to live with or live up to. Political campaigns, after all, have by definition a remarkably short shelf-life and are peppered with the wrong kind of rhetoric. But a political movement, even a movement of one or two or three thoughtful people can last and have small but important effects, especially when positive.


Perhaps this is what Walt Whitman was thinking about in, say, 1856 when he was scribbling in one of his pocket-sized leather notebooks about a city and a house being "great" because of "great men" and "great women." As meaningless as the word "great" has become (and most likely was already in the 1850s), the sentiment of those scribblings still suggests that it is the people that create, maintain, and evolve the system: government, civil society, cityscape, and home. A little bit of greatness of confidence, consensus, and candidness just might scratch up something positive.


The trouble is not finding the willing followers. The trouble is linguistics. It is so much easier to define a political movement in the negative, as protest, using fear, and threat, and anger. These are not qualities that we lack or that we need, but what we need cannot be found any longer through words. 


At this point there is only one word that comes to mind. Happiness. Not "the pursuit of" because that is too reducible to property. Not "a return to" because that too is a defining by negation. Not "don't worry" because there is indeed much to be worried for. But just the simple slogan: Happiness. To cut some of the fear, anger, hypocrisy, bribery, and gridlock. 


I am not sure how far we can get with this one word. We could hope for something "trans-formative"... but there I go again with that problematic diction.


Wish us luck.

Field Trip

     The Child is father of the Man [Turdsworth]

     In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. [Emerson]

I still don't know what Wordsworth meant, though I appreciate the sentiment: the aging adult turning child again for play, for love, for acknowledgement? 

Or is it, actually, that the child fathers? Leads the man into an honest sense of who he is when he's free to be himself, as he did before he cared who he'd become: the child before he was a man.

There is a third alternative: the kind of father the man becomes begins when he is just a tripping child full of wonder & fear.

But all of this is less important than a morning spent walking in the woods on the first day of Fall on a first field trip for both father & son. 

On that path in the woods: the child, the man are equals: both now & then. 

Walking, looking up at migrating families of butterflies, he unexpectedly grabbed onto my hand. I shrunk, not out of fear, but out of wonder. In that moment there were no words that could be worth saying, however poetic or philosophical, just two boys in the woods. 


He lead; I followed.

Megafauna

Zoology: the large mammals of a particular region, habitat, or geological period
Ecology: animals that are large enough to be seen with the naked eye
(www.oxforddictionaries.com)

1.

Here be… Megalania?
The ring’s just not the same,
the legs too short too, &, alas,
no wings. But still Diptrodon
was no match for: razor tooth,
paralytic venom drip, & speed.
Or was it the tyrant lizard who

first inspired stone throwers to
venture out for hero-quest?
After all, his feathers now suggest
that once or future flight: a short
leap between continents to behold
Microraptor: gliding between palms.


2.


Once upon a time in The Great Lakes,
Castoroides ohioensis loomed large
the Indiana nights, with or without a
paddle tail, her six inch incisors gleaming
in the moonglow on the Kankakee marsh.
With a heft the size of Ursus americanus,
this rodent was no easy prey, and her pelts
were not taken often, if ever. But a dam-
less life & another glaciation left it lacking,
unfit: only a fossil’s life left for collecting.


3.


But it’s the seas that breed the biggest beasts:
No, not Nessie, but Ocean roamers tiny necked.
Kronosaurus, nearly fifty feet of nastiness,
writhing through the briny depths to avenge
his namesake’s punishment for Titanic lust.


Medusozoa’s Cambrian forbears, dried up,
dread-snakes & all, found by flat-footed
Kansans in the (underwater) deserts of Utah,
tableau the slowness of earliest thought:
nerve-nets that not so soon became brain.
Still the largest living roam with Lion’s Mane,
or gather in Nettles, or wander as lonely Cannonballs.


Cethorinus maximus is “cosmopolitan” despite
his open mouth & krill swilling intemperance.
What it basks in one can’t be sure, but brine’s
whitest glow brings it up to feed & feel the glow.
His teeth unnecessary but for the hold-on that
ensures the wild ride that provides propagation.
This gentle giant tugs at what is fathomable for
we, newbies, so allegoric to the dark & deep.


4.

But to speak ecologically: even the tiny are mega.
As when the eye picks up a miniscule speck of red
migrating across sidewalk earth—or a flattened book
beast hides in the precipitous gutter of an old tome.
These tiniest megafauns still loom large & long.


To look carefully is to know the difference between
the (mostly) harmless clover-mite whose worst is to
deposit an algae haze on my redbrick, of colossal scale,
& their larger cousin, Trombiculidae, whose chigger-itch
can send their more mega-host, us, scratching the walls.


But it’s in the longer term that the mini-mega show
their stature. Take up the book again & search that
middle ground between old & new to find the little
diggers eating at the truth & lies of paper-immortality.
Psocoptera & Silverfish, paper-dragon & book-shark,
hole their way through tragedy, comedy, & history alike,
so the small may be large, long before the first become last.

Off the Grid

turning, a face in the wind:

as if there was nothing left

that the earth could hold,

no need or want that

couldn’t be found some

place else, some sky:  far.

-----

we meet here, daily

it seems you wait for

me around this corner,

near the tracks, near

fields that rise & then,

again, fall—or, rather,

are taken down:   cut

short,   like a life that

served & in going gave

["Off the Grid #1" US-59 Spring 2010]

where were you this

morning when I looked

to the lines for your

sign & found nothing

but someone else’s

power surging into

morning light?

-----

this too is a made place:

dreamscape, without

grid or track or high-

way, no need for

wheel or wing, but

only mind, eye, &

sleep: here, where

 irregular is nothing,  

we travel together,

flitting, fleeting,  &

until all has flown.

when I wake, will

it be unmade, dis-

integrated, lost?

will I be permitted

a return?

-----

there is little left

to say that hasn’t

crossed a line

somewhere, or

that a mind won’t

soon send across

space to rebound

near me as a

figure of glittering

text: moveable,

removable, &

mostly un-noticed.

there is nothing

new under the

sun, but your

wings as they

gather upwards

& away: allowing

shadow to reach

across the span

of your farthest

points, between

you & I, between

acceptance & need.

Readings

[Note: This is inessential reading; this might be tedious even for the small (and kind) audience gathered here, but I wrote it, and enjoyed writing it, so I thought I'd post. Feel free to skip and move on to your next "reading" project.]

Concertina wire, twice,

the words: entered

my field of vision: once

in juvenilia by a general,

secondly, a poem by a

Topekan, a quick learner,

one of the under 40s the

foundation loves.

I am not incarcerated, at

war, or of an imagination

that craves boundaries

or blood, suggested or

shed. All I could hear

was the soft bellowing

of distant music, that

might have been

birdsong.

_____

The Englishman responsible

for the idea: image-nation,

told me a story in three

pages of a Japanese brush,

a French swimming pool,

a Cambodian, arthritic

swimmer & her husband:

I did not weep nor smile,

but the minutes were

strong ones that passed

by:  both noticed & un-

noticed. I can attest to

them but did not count.

_____

A white H on a blue field,

& no need to turn is a

blessing. The sounds of

ambulance, firetruck,

& cruiser are distinct

but can be read in

several ways: help,

trouble, prayer, relief,

fear:       or just go

without notice.

In the rearview: the letters

arrange themselves, even

without the noise, but

staring straight ahead

familiarity fades.  Luckily,

when need arrives

sound can be enough,

& with any luck, you’ll

never need to know

anyway.

_____

From what I can recall:

Villon’s songs were in

one voice, but several

characters, while Hugo

always sounded like

several people speaking

at once. Or was it the

other way around?

_____

And then there’s work:

Winthrop, Bradstreet,

Taylor, Edwards,

Franklin, Paine,

Wheatley, Irving,

Poe, Hawthorne,

Melville: All

weighing in their

own way these

next three weeks.

_____

A red-eye jet, I must

assume, just shook

my sleeping house

(metonymy?)

not enough to

wake the dreamers.

Isn’t noticing this

a kind of reading,

too?

_____

There is a poem that a

certain Laureate likes

that de-grades a gathering

of homeless, fire-warmers 

by suggesting that a poem

will make readers see

the cold they inhabit

more clearly after  they

finishing reading.  The

argument is actually

the poet’s, but I blame

the elder too, because

he didn’t even correct

him for failing to mention

the way the exhalations

of each man mixed with

the others & while

one choked a bit from

too much smoke or

from too many nights

outside, or too much

exhaust from the

commuters as

they pass by (not

reading a poem

but listening to a

book on tape about

global markets or the

death of journalism)

the others rotated

just enough that

he could catch his

breath before

the smoke

engulfed

his lungs.

_____

I must confess to

poly-reading,

there must ten or

twelve cracked

spines now waiting

to be shelved &

pushed back to-

gather with the

masses: a mystery,

 the  other halves of

 two collections of stories,

the rest of Stevens,

Kumin, Kenyon,

& too much Wright.

_____

Finally, a dying man

chooses, carefully,

what he reads:

those books

remaining, a

friend’s last

novel,  prayer

or curse filled

emails & online

posts, but mostly

people collecting

as culture, what he

has spent his life’s

years waging

some kind of

war on, to make

peace with an

answerless cosmos,

he writes last

dispatches from

that tropic few

 hard-living

critics survive.

There is so much

left to read,

& he keeps

adding more.

_____

There is more

that I could tell,

but, after all,

one must protect
at least some

of  his sources.

Camerado: The Birth of a Word

I mentioned in a previous post that one of my earliest formative poetic moments was reading Whitman for the first time, specifically, the section of "Starting From Paumanok" pictured below. The Whitman Archive has made available "The Blue Book" or Whitman's annotated copy of the 1860 Leaves of Grass. The page presented below shows, in Whitman's hand, his coining of the term: "Camerado".

I realize that I am a bit of a Whitman-nerd, but I find it quite exciting to have access to the development of what is certainly one of the most important books of American (World?) poetry. In addition, as a writer, poet, teacher, editor (ha!), this digital copy of that ever-evolving (and devolving) book provides a window into how creation happens and continues through revision. It seems we could all learn something about the power of re-seeing by perusing Uncle Walt's epic task of revising a behemoth.

Enjoy!

September 2010

                        (or, 15 years)

My father already gone,

when my mother dies

I’ll be an orphan. Mind you,

she’s well  & I’m too old

to be a ward of any state.

My wife & children will

have to care & foster me

until finally I grow up.

This being said:

I am a grown man,

who lost his old man

in a selfish age

& it didn’t kill him,

like he expected,

when he imagined,

as a boy, being

fatherless would.

That being said:

dead dad’s do haunt

& mostly it’s for good.

In dreams & costume

clad they enter as

memories re-clothed

as Indians hunting

what-might-have-beens

but they never tell

where they left unfinished

manuscripts you know exist.

When I die, one hopes not

so young as he, I will return

a songbird that follows my boys

to whatever landscapes,

real or imaginary,

they believe in enough

to look for me in.

Soon: Winter will arrive.

The redbird will sit patiently

in the hedge-row, which will be

dusted lightly with the snow

that might just be the distinguished years

some old men never get to use.

_______________

This is another re-found work from last year, now revised. I wrote it in December(2009), but it is more of a September poem.